Masters Of Noir Vol Iv Part 2

Macalay found a little wind left in him and said: "I don't know, sir."

The P.K. bawled "Parade rest." Spray from his mouth landed on Macalay's face.

Macalay advanced one foot, and started to clasp his hands in front of him. As soon as he separated his legs, the P.K. brought his knee up between them, hard. Macalay pa.s.sed out.

He came to in the Hole, in solitary. He was still naked, but there was a suit of coveralls and a pair of felt slippers in his cell. He put them on, and had to walk bent over, because the coveralls were too short. The slippers were too big.

n.o.body tapped on his water pipes, n.o.body put a message in his oatmeal for two weeks. That was what he ate-a big bowl of oatmeal once a day, put in a Judas-gate in the door every morning, together with a half-gallon jug of water. The Judas-gate only opened one way at a time, so he didn't know if his food was brought by a trusty or a guard.

That went on for two weeks. Towards the end of that time, Macalay began to have an illusion; he imagined Gresham's dead body was in the cell with him. When he moved from one side of the Hole to the other, the body slowly moved after him. It took a lot of effort not to think about contacting Inspector Strane and begging him to call the whole thing off.

When he got back to cell block No. 9, he had a new bunky. It didn't matter to Macalay; none of the cons talked to him anyway. He sat down on his bunk, and the thin mattress and chain-link spring felt wonderful after the floor of the Hole. He pulled his feet up, stretched, and slowly, tentatively closed his eyes; the light hurt them.

The body of Gresham came back and lay on the floor of the cell. But in a few minutes it faded, and Macalay let out a long sigh.

The man on the other bunk put down his magazine. "What did you see?" he asked.

"A body," Macalay said. "He was my sidekick."

"I saw my mother," the other man said. "The time I was in the Hole. Everybody sees something, if he stays in the Hole more than three days."

Macalay said: "Does anybody-" and then stopped. He suddenly realized he was being talked to. He finished the sentence. "Does anybody ever get less than three days in the Hole?"

"Not under this P.K.," the cellmate said. "If he don't end up with a s.h.i.+v in his ribs, the cla.s.s of prisoners has fallen off in this can ... My name's Mason. Jock Mason."

"Macalay."

"Yeah, I know. You were a cop, Mac. We're willing to forget it. My gang. Jock's Jockeys. If you'd said somebody lifted your needle, all the guys in the shoe shop woulda gotten hacked. We like a guy who keeps his teeth covered."

Macalay slowly grinned. It never occurred to him to say he might not like to be one of Jock's Jockeys. He said: "Hey. What are we doin' in our cells?"

Jock laughed. "It's Sunday morning. Church parade's just gone, an' lunch'll be coming up in an hour ... A guy loses track of time in the Hole, an' don't I know it. There's a ball game this afternoon, the Stripes against the Stars. Who do you like?" Jock slowly rolled himself a cigarette and tossed the makings over to Macalay.

Macalay built a cigarette carefully. He hadn't smoked in four years, but he thought he knew how to roll one from when he was a kid. It looked a little like a tamale, but it held together while he lighted it. He said: "I'll take either side you don't want, for a pack of tailormades-when I earn them." The cons got a quarter a day when they worked.

Jock said: "You got the Stars. It's a sucker bet."

"Yeah? They'll lick the numbers off the Stripes."

Both men laughed.

Life changed after that. A prison is a peculiar place; almost everything happens in one that happens in the outside, free world; but it happens fast, in odd corners, just before a guard walks by, just after one has pa.s.sed.

So Macalay, as one of Jock's Jockeys, found he could get drunk if he really wanted to; could get as many uncensored letters out as he wanted to; could even have a love affair-if he cared for it, and with a boy who should have been in a women's prison-or an asylum-anyway.

He pa.s.sed up the latter two amus.e.m.e.nts, but once in a while he took on a skinful. Ten to twenty's a hard sentence to pa.s.s, and he'd done less than six months of it.

So he was in on the drunk in Boiler No. 4, which made prison history.

No. 4 was a power boiler, not a heating one, and it was out of commission while a bunch of cons scaled it. Fitz Llewellen, a lifer, was in on the scaling gang, and he designed a still out of some of the boiler tubes they were cleaning. Since no guard in his right mind would possibly go inside a boiler, the still ran all the time they were chipping No. 4; but Fitz and Jock wouldn't let anybody touch, the white mule till the day before the boiler was cleaned.

There were six of them in there: Fitz, Jock, Macalay, the Nosy who had been a trusty when Mac was a fresh fish, and two safecrackers named Hanning and Russ, friends Macalay had cultivated with a great show of casualness, and persuaded Jock to take into their gang.

They pa.s.sed the popskull around gently at first, with a lot of "will-you-please" and "your turn." It was pretty good jungle juice; made out of oranges and prunes lifted from the mess hall. Jock's habitual easy gloom lifted, and he began singing, the tenor notes bouncing back off the boiler plate. "Singin' in the rain, oh singin' in the rain ... "

"Shut up," Russ said. "A screw'll hear you."

Jock said: "A guy can't shut up forever. I feel good." He went on singing.

Russ said: "You may want a month in the Hole. I don't. Shutup."

"Hole ain't so bad," Jock said. "Ask Mac. He was there last."

Macalay said: "Not so bad. But I don't want any more of it."

"You used to be a cop, didn't you?" Russ asked.

Macalay nodded. It was the first time it had been mentioned.

"I don't like cops," Russ said. He drained a big swallow of popskull, and breathed out. "I don't like cops' brothers. I don't like ex-cops, an' any woman who'd give birth to a cop would sleep with monkeys." And he took another drink.

"Okay," Macalay said, telling himself to take it slow and easy, to feel his way along. "Now I'm a con, just like anybody else." It was hot in the boiler, and the liquor didn't help any. That stuff must have been a hundred and thirty proof at least, and they were drinking it straight.

"I don't like drinking with cops," Russ said monotonously. "I don't like drinking with cops' cellmates. I don't have to listen to cops' cellmates sing."

"You're just beggin' for a throat full of teeth," Jock said, still humming.

"Oh, tough guy," Russ said. His hand flicked, and there was a little round of wood in it; a piece of broomstick, but carved carefully to give it looks. It opened, and one piece had a leather-needle sticking out of it. The other had been the sheath.

"Put it away Russ," Hanning said. He was a very quiet guy, who had only drifted into buddying with Russ because they'd been in the same trade in the free world, loft-men.

"You turnin' cop-lover, too?" Russ asked. His speech was getting a little blurred. He turned the bradawl s.h.i.+v, and it shone in the dim light.

Jock suddenly shot out his foot, trying to kick the s.h.i.+v out of Russ' hand. Russ slid away, and stood up, his back against the polished boiler plate. "Now we know," he said. "Now we know." He started going for Jock.

Macalay got his feet under him. Why couldn't it be some con other than Russ? Lousy luck. There was no other way to make the play now. Maybe, with Jock, he could get the s.h.i.+v away and later, when sober, Russ would appreciate it.

The floor of the boiler was slick from the chipping they had given it. It was going to be a nasty fight; but Macalay needed Russ alive. He must try to keep him alive.

Fitz was gone; Nosy was halfway up the ladder. Before he could disappear through the manhole, Hanning was after him. The light was blocked a second time, and then Jock and Macalay were alone with the safecracker.

Jock said: "Got a s.h.i.+v, Mac?"

Macalay said: "No. But there's only one of him. I'll keep him looking at me, and you get up behind him and mug him."

Jock said: "Fair enough."

Russ was bent over, shuffling around the boiler floor, the s.h.i.+v held out, threateningly and guarding his belly at the same time. He moved into the center of the boiler, and that was a mistake. Jock started to get behind him, he half-turned, and Macalay was on him.

Macalay had had judo training as a rookie cop. He lunged at the knife with his right hand, and as it came up, s.h.i.+fted and came in fast with his left. The knife edge of his palm caught Russ on the side of the neck, and the safecracker went half off his feet.

Then everything turned into slow motion. Russ caromed off the side of the boiler, slid and staggered, and fell. He landed square on the leather needle in his hand. He made a little, quiet noise-almost like a tired man snuggling into bed-and was still.

Jock and Macalay stared at each other across his body. After a moment Jock bent down and felt his pulse. "Okay," he said. "Okay. He's had it."

Macalay said: "I guess we have, too." He shook his head. "No way of getting out of this. No way." And by the emphasis, he included his chance of beating the rap per Strane's agreement.

Jock said: "We can try. It's hot out there. Maybe the screw's gone off to hunt himself some shade ... If we can get to the kitchen, and be b.u.mming chow, the boys there'll give us an alibi."

Macalay said: "We have a chance. Those d.a.m.n guards don't work too hard."

Jock went up the ladder first. Macalay was so close behind him that he almost got his fingers stepped on. They clambered through the manhole, and out onto the boiler top, and dropped down on the brick floor of the boiler room.

n.o.body was around. The heating furnaces were off for the summer; the con in charge of the power boilers was around on the other side, where the gauges were. It was almost as hot on the boiler room floor as it had been inside the boiler, or at least it seemed that way.

They made it to the door, and out, and walked along the side of the powerhouse towards the kitchen, the next building. The yard was deserted in the heat. Jock said: "The P.K. done us a favor, when he thought he was piling it on us, making us chip that boiler. We're gonna get away with it."

Macalay said: "We haven't yet."

Jock said: "No. We ain't. I got an ace in the hole. I've been saving it. If we can make the kitchen I think I'll play it."

"This is the big hand," Macalay said. "Play your ace. This is murder." The goose that could lay the hundred-grand egg for him had been murdered.

"Self defense," Jock said quickly. "Ain't no fingerprints on that s.h.i.+v except his."

Macalay laughed. "By the time the P.K. gets through, there'll be fingerprints. Yours, mine. That P.K. lives to see us all fixed, but good."

A hundred feet from the kitchen, ninety feet. Their shoes seemed to have lead soles, like they'd dressed for diving. The sweat poured steadily down Macalay's back. Abruptly, he wanted to stand in the scorched yard and scream: "I'm not a criminal. I'm not a con! I don't belong with these men, this isn't me!"

You're shook, he told himself. Take it easy. Remember, this is the eight-ball you picked.

Fifty feet, forty feet. The whole traverse wasn't taking more than two minutes. But hours went by inside Macalay's brain, years of aging were being piled on his body. He told himself, trying to make a joke of it, that his arteries would be hardened before he got to the kitchen.

He found the joke didn't amuse him.

Now the loathesome smell of greasy stew bubbling was strong in their noses. There should have been a guard outside the kitchen door; there wasn't. The P.K. was so bad that the guards doped off half the time, smoking and lounging in a shady area behind the infirmary. The P.K. himself stayed out of the yard as much as possible.

The Warden was writing a book on the reform of criminals. The Deputy Warden toured around the United States making speeches about the Warden's pet theories.

It was a h.e.l.l of penitentiary, but it had a kitchen and they were almost there.

And then they were inside. Macalay followed Jock around the edge of the big room, past cons peeling vegetables, was.h.i.+ng pots, past baker-cons and cook-cons and salad-maker-cons. There were supposed to be civilian chefs, but the jobs were never filled, and the budget came out nicely at the end of the year, if the food didn't.

Somewhere Jock s.n.a.t.c.hed two white caps, and they put them on. They bellied in to a sink where a punk named Snifter was scrubbing grills with a red brick. Each of them s.n.a.t.c.hed up a brick and went to work. Macalay noticed that Jock was very careless with the dirty water that came off the grease-caked grill; he splashed it on his clothes, it ran down on his shoes. After a moment Macalay got the idea too; and in a couple of minutes he looked as though he'd been working in the kitchen all morning.

His stomach began to unknot, his arteries to soften.

A trusty-messenger went by; carrying invoices from the kitchen to the front office. Jock stepped back and blocked his way. Jock's lips hardly moved, and his voice was faint even as close as Macalay was.

"Bud, take a message for me. To a screw named Sinclair. You know him, don't you?"

"Yeah," the trusty said. "Big potbellied guy with a brown moustache."

"The one," Jock said. "Tell 'im I wanna see him. Here. Now."

"S'posin' he don't want to see you?"

"Tell him I just got a letter from a friend of his in ElkoNevada."

"Okay," said the trusty. "You owe me a favor." You got nothing for nothing in the can.

Jock nodded, and stepped in to the sink again, started scrubbing. A con pushed a load of grills up and dumped them in the sink, and more greasy water splashed over them. Macalay said: "Watch what you're doin', stir-b.u.m."

"Who's a stir-b.u.m, you stir-b.u.m?"

The grease from the grills was a solid coating on Macalay's arms now, and its taste, and the taste of the blue air of the kitchen, was all down his throat. He said: "Isn't this enough grills?"

Jock said: "I'm waiting for Sinclair."

All this time the punk named Snifter scrubbed grills between them, not saying anything, apparently not hearing anything. Macalay realized that the punk was scared to death at being between Jock and one of his Jockeys, a tough yard gang. Macalay wondered what Snifter would do if he knew why Macalay and Jock were scrubbing grills, and remembering why they were there, made the filthy work a lot easier to take.

And here came Sinclair, a paunchy guy, with a moustache that probably would have been gray if he hadn't chewed tobacco. There were grease spots on his gray s.h.i.+rt and blue pants, and tarnish on his badge. "You Jock?" he said.

Jock nodded. "One time of Elko Nevada," he said. "With lots of friends there."

Sinclair chewed the moustache, and looked at Macalay and Snifter. "Blow."

Jock said: "Snifter can blow. Macalay's a friend of mine. From ElkoNevada."

Snifter sidled away, happily.

"What's all this about Elko, Nevada?" Sinclair said. Unlike Jock he did not say it as though it was all one word.

"Mac and I have been here all morning. When we reported to the job we were supposed to do, it was all done, and you went through the yard and told us to report to the kitchen."

Sinclair spat brown juice on the kitchen floor. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," Jock said. "And you never held up Horse Caner's gambling joint in ElkoNevada and you never shot his brother and one of the faro-dealers. Never."

Macalay watched Sinclair. The pig eyes of the guard never showed anything, not fear, not anger. "When did all this happen?"

"Five minutes after the first s.h.i.+ft started this morning," Jock said.

Sinclair said: "Okay. What job was it that was finished?"

"Chipping boilers."

Sinclair started away. From five feet he turned back. "And stay away from Nevada."